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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258556">Hemorrhage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofterSoftest/pseuds/SofterSoftest'>SofterSoftest</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Kit/Olaf mentioned, Nostalgia, Olaf performing Count Olaf, Violet mentioned, and a broken man breaking, and hating it, and still being the same man, includes disguises, shucking the self, you know how it is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:15:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258556</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofterSoftest/pseuds/SofterSoftest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He could be brand new. Or, he could recycle the old disguises - become a sea captain or a doctor or an auctioneer. He could be a father.</p><p>He could be Count Olaf.</p><p>Tonight, he is somewhere in the middle.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hemorrhage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally, any disguise is a relief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A certain surrender. Or an opportunity. A plaything and a challenge and great fun, all in one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the </span>
  <em>
    <span>process</span>
  </em>
  <span>! Like a ritual. It goes like this - Olaf removes his stiff jacket and his silk scarves with their threadbare monograms and his sweat-stained henley, and he replaces them with an idea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anything he wanted, he could be. Anything that got him what he wanted, he could be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could replace the bartender across the room, so busy he could hardly see straight. He could replace the live music, every instrument, and even the young woman sitting center-stage on a black wooden stool singing just loud enough to be heard over the lingering dinner rush.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could be brand new. Or, he could recycle the old disguises - become a sea captain or a doctor or an auctioneer. He could be a father.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could be Count Olaf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tonight, he is somewhere in the middle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sits alone at a table in a very crowded bar, dead center in the city. It is opening night. It is nearly midnight. He is alone, and in disguise. Three fingers of whiskey down, and he is no longer pretending to be drunk, scowling as he is while his eyes swim in his head and his disguise sags until it feels all wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wig is making his head itch - copper hair, shiny, shorn to his jaw and dense with waves. He had picked at it before putting it on, trying to smooth the waves that he knew were far too bold to be flattering. Olaf is all angles. All sharp lines and points. He does not do even a scrap of gentleness or softness or goodness. Not anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>An unavoidable flash of nostalgia rises from memory as he sips his whiskey - himself in a tight skirt and red kitten heels and a wig taller than his outstretched hand. He remembers his voice pitched high and mocking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m cookie. Shirley?”</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Then, he could use gentleness. Could work with femininity and put it on and smooth it out until the seams were invisible and his disguise was so perfect, so good he forgot himself inside it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tonight, the wig makes him feel wrong, yet he had donned it anyway and slapped on a thin little moustache for good measure. He stole a clean suit jacket from the apartment beside his, always unlocked, and walked to the bar in the rain, hoping to feel like he was leaving himself behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t quite come up with a full story for this disguise, but was toying with the basics. Someone pompous and annoying, probably. A musician or a journalist or an artist. He wasn’t sure. Still, </span>
  <em>
    <span>being </span>
  </em>
  <span>Count Olaf had followed him out the door and down the street and into the bar like a lingering illness. Like a private eye. Like a beaten dog.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And there he was in the middle. Trying to escape himself by hiding in a disguise while the disguise forced him out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Olaf clears his throat for no reason. He taps his glass against the brand new table, shiny with gloss. He glances at the happy patrons which makes him dizzy, so he looks to the exposed brick walls and the overhead lighting speckled with warm, glowing Edison bulbs. Seeing them makes him remember a little girl (who grew into a young lady and then a grown woman who looked at him too heavily, too often, with such sadness and shame - ) nicknamed Ed after the inventor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Olaf sips his drink as he wonders where that woman might be and what she might be doing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks about her until he wishes he were drowning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside, the weather is raging. Through the front entrance, all windows, Olaf can see the pitch black night and the rain that cuts it through. He watches streams intersect over the glass and drain to the sidewalk. He watches puddles swell. He watches the runoff rush into the streets.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Behind his eyes, he imagines a flooding river becoming a great lake becoming a sea. He wishes for a high place to jump. He wishes to never come back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That thought leads to another memory - a scrap of poetry pulled from someplace so deep in his mind he cannot even guess how he knows it.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Safe to sea</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Even the weariest river… something, something safe to sea.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>His glass is empty when he raises it to his lips. It is only then that he realizes he is wallowing. He is brimming with foul whiskey and nostalgia. With wistfulness, almost as bitter as the drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he sets the glass down, Olaf examines his hands, sees them scarred and calloused. He tries to consider his life in an objective way. He thinks of his every wretched deed and does not feel wretched about them, really, but still there is a belief, unshakeable, that his heart has gone rotten in his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is so sad and so angry, and he realizes that is all he has ever felt. That, and brief flashes of happiness so small he didn’t know how to hold them. These moments were there, and then they were gone like the flash of a camera’s bulb or a lightning strike or a discarded disguise. False, flimsy, gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Olaf was a child unfamiliar with joy. Olaf was a young man cut on cruelty. Olaf is a grown man sick with himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dead dreams of days forsaken,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Red strays of ruined Springs…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>An open hand appears at his side, small, scarred and calloused just as his. It grabs his empty glass and slides a new one before him, drink glimmering golden as the Edison’s, yet the motion stops Olaf’s thoughts in a heartbeat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(In the back of his mind, a woman is screaming. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Even the weariest river!</span>
  </em>
  <span> She shrieks into the cavern of his skull, so loud he can feel it rattling his teeth, so loud his ears ache. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea!</span>
  </em>
  <span>)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he recovers from the shock of recognition - spotting it in the bulbs of her knuckles and the slopes of her fingernails and the scars he had put on her himself - she is far across the room. She is dressed in all black, just as the other waitstaff. Dressed clean. Dressed smart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hair is still the same flaxen mess. Her shoulders sink with the same eternally tired slump. She stands behind the bar mixing a cocktail, those hands he had recognized so instantly working smoothly. Always working. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is no hiding. No makeup, no costume. Just Kit, with her glasses and her hair and her hands and - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes are on him. Kit’s eyes are on him, and she is here, and she is disguised as herself in a way he had rejected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He meets her look, realizing he had been thinking about love the entire night. Rotten love. Unbearable love. Slinking from his apartment and onto the street and through the door, he had been squeezing his heart in his fist, willing it to beat. With every sip, he was praying for a hemorrhage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Meanwhile, Kit stares at him so sweet and so sad. Their dead love lies between them, stretching the entire distance and then past them. If he wanted to, Olaf is sure he could reach out and touch it, touch some thread of memory, some foreign moment of mercy. He keeps his hands empty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He and Kit stare at one another for a moment too long. Paranoia creeps in. The past wells up. He starts wondering what she is doing at this little bar on opening night. Wonders if she is volunteering, and who she is with, and why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he is finished. The sickness he had been feeling towards himself spirals. Olaf feels Kit’s eyes on him as he pats his wig and stands, painfully drunk and painfully aware of far too much. He slaps money onto the table. He looks into the rain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(</span>
  <em>
    <span>Even the weariest river! </span>
  </em>
  <span>He hears. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Even - !</span>
  </em>
  <span>)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He flees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
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